What made Rivers Cuomo go wrong? Was it the poor initial response to Weezer's second album, Pinkerton? The adulation that met Weezer's return from self-imposed exile? The knowledge that the band's legion of diehard fans would embrace any old crap? We may never know, but it's obvious from Weezer's sixth album -- self-titled but known as "The Red Album" -- that things still aren't right. The disc follows the zesty first song, "Troublemaker," with a series of clunkers and indulgences, sometimes all wrapped up in one like the unlistenable "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)."

"Everybody Get Dangerous" is basically rap metal, while "Dreamin'" is almost insultingly dumb. Even the single "Pork and Beans," the closest the album comes to classic Weezer, features so many daft lines that it makes you wonder if Cuomo is just taking a piss. Maybe this Harvard grad has turned his band into some sort of meta-statement on the banality of modern rock. That's certainly his prerogative, and it's tempered by the fact that he and the band sure do sound like they're having fun. The problem is it sounds like they're doing so at the listener's expense. That kind of contempt cancels out even the catchiest hooks and choruses. And without those, Weezer is nothing.

-- Joshua Klein